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Bio - refinery, solution or part of the problem?


manders

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A few months back it was announced that venice refinery will be converted away from crude oil and will run on palm oil to poduce bio-diesel, bio naphtha and bio-lpg.

I did a quick calculation and at full refinery capacity this would require about 10,000 km2 of ex-rainforest to supply the refinery with palm oil.

Projecting forward a bit, to feed every refinery on the planet with palm oil would require 170% of the remaining rainforest area.

To my rather simple brain this doesn't seem very sustainable on any level!

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Unfortunately the rain forests are doomed.

As a species we are the same as any other in that our population will expand until the resources, disease or predation become limiting and cause the population to drop or crash.

Unfortunately, we have technologies to take more of the resoures, fight diseases and and remove any predators. So our population will expand until all the surface of the earth is put to supporting our huge population.

Then will come the crash as we run out of space and resources but unfortunately the damage will have been done and most of the species on the planet will have become extinct.

If your are an optimist you might believe that we will start using our brains and control our population size ourselves, something other species are unable to do. or you might argue that what ever we do is natural as we are a product of nature, and our effect is just the normal evolution of the planet.

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Unfortunately the rain forests are doomed.

As a species we are the same as any other in that our population will expand until the resources, disease or predation become limiting and cause the population to drop or crash.

 

 

Greed plays a large part too. Whilst there is demand, no matter whether it is essential or not, greed will drive man to exploitation to make a profit irrespective of whether it is sustainable or not.

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Guest paul y

personally speaking ive been hoping an advanced alien race will soon pay us a visit with an ultimatum that just cant be ignored, its about time we collectively had our heads bashed together like the immature tribal mentality greed driven little snot nosed children we really are,

but that isn't going to happen, Fermi paradox, and Einstein pretty much summed our future up with "I know not what weapons will be used to fight world war 3 but world war 4 will be fought with sticks and stones".

at least nature will have some chance to fight back once we are gone, it has survived mass extinctions far worse than we can conjure.

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Guest paul y

My money is on a plague of some sort... Those bacterial genes are working on their master plan right now im sure.

we are the plague of some sort. there is more chance of me eating my own head than humanity making it. 

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